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N/Assembly dumps election sequence bill

April 21, 2018 13:43·
House of Rep members

House of Rep members

Ovie Omo-Agege, a senator from Delta state, had opposed it, saying Buhari might be the target.

For the upper legislative chamber, lawmakers were sharply divided on the legality of the amendment.

"It is therefore important that we remove all those areas that the president had objected to and pass the remaining items as a separate bill and send it back to him", he suggested.

In his remarks, the Deputy President of the Senate, Mr Ike Ekweremadu, who presided said it was important for all Senators "to be on the same page in matters such as this".

Lawan said, "Let me right away state very clearly without mincing words, without being ambiguous, that I am totally, vehemently and comprehensively against this bill".

On the passage of constitution adjustment bills, the House secured the required two-thirds majority during voting on the items, and transmitted same to the state Houses of Assembly for their input. And I said it, I added that I was going to vote against it.

Each of the sequences generated disagreements. I said it before that I voted against the desire by the National Assembly to determine the sequence of elections.

The National Assembly yesterday backtracked on the reordered election sequence rejected by President Muhammadu Buhari. "This raises a lot of concern of possible manipulations of the outcome of results of elections, hence the importance of this bill", he said, adding that the proposed sequence does not in any way infringe or violate any provision of the constitution.

He stressed that Senators should be honourable people to stand by their position whenever they take one and as such, he could not support the bill. Then we can now deal with the issues in a separate bill altogether.

The Chief Whip, Senator Sola Adeyeye, also said, "I rise to state categorically that I totally oppose this bill".

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The National Assembly had passed the bill, which, among others, seeks to reshuffle the sequence of polls during a general election. Olushola Adeyeye, kicked against the bill by describing it as unconstitutional.

"Another one was the powers of INEC as contained in the Constitution, but I don't want to go into the legality of these issues".

"That was the fate we suffered in previous constitution amendment exercises where many vital clauses had to die on the basis of certain unwanted provisions".

"The President has made observations in respect of some aspects of that Bill, he did not say that the Bill we passed was entirely useless".

Despite been stepped down; the Bills can, however, be presented again for debate on another legislative day.

Meanwhile, at the House of Representatives, action on the bill was suspended.

Passage of the bill by both chambers of the National Assembly had led to controversy, with many including several lawmakers claiming it was targeted at President Buhari's second term bid.

Leading the debate for the second reading of the bill, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Independent National Electoral Commission, Senator Suleiman Nazif, who sponsored the bill, said the sequence had been amended.

Some lawmakers were opposed to the move to withdraw the bill.

However, the presiding Deputy Speaker of the House, Yussuf Lasun, intervened and said that the sponsor of the bill had the right to withdraw it.

In the House of Representatives, the lead sponsor, Dukku was not on the floor and the Chairman Rules and Business, Emmanuel Orker-Jev (APC, Benue) requested the leave of the House to step down the bill.

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